erm, you say you’re here to see his royal highness, prince william?

after a relatively chilled friday night of dinner with marky, a bad film and then craig’s party with .gregiño, i crashed pretty early, still recovering from the awful flu i had earlier in the week.

when my alarm went off at 930am saturday morning, i started making the calls. mark, .gregiño, scottish david and marcos all were awoken to my greeting of happy christmas. like white spandex on a circuit boy, like 3 layers of foundation on a pimply drag queen, like a number-two buzzcut on a lesbian, the holiday of gay pride was all over london.

friggin’ gay homosexuals, they’re taking over the city!

started off the day with a very magnificent march, starting at cleopatra’s needle by westminster, wandering past 10 downing street in whitehall, eventually passing my old green park office on picadilly ave, concluding in hyde park. perfect weather, a few bottles of champers and the lovely marcos, .gregiño and mark made for a delightful stroll, along with 60,000 others. no problems, no arrests, no violence. a police spokesman was quoted saying, as far as i’m aware everything is hunky dory—especially hunky!

okay, so the four of us weren’t necessarily making a political statement by stumbling around central london with cheap champagne [ala torsten], but there is something important about [1] feeling part of a larger community, [2] celebrating our diversity (i never meet lesbians, trannies, leather daddies or those strange bisexual types) and [3] showing our strength in numbers to the rest of the world. gay marriage may be legal in canada, section 28 finally repealed over here, and gay sex is now legal in america, but we have a looooong way to go still, both politically and socially.

even though i lived in san francisco for years, and am editor of a huge gay magazine, this was my first pride parade. i’ve always poopooed the concept of pride. yes, i’m proud to be gay, but i’m not necessarily proud of gay people having a hedonistic day of drinking and drugs and sex in the bushes. well, color me a hypocrite, cuz that’s exactly how i spent saturday.

16 bazillion tossers anxiously await the best disposable pop groups of the week

this year the pride celebration was fabulously in hyde park, thanks in no small part to the gay-friendly liberal mayor of london, ken livingstone. fifteen years ago, when the gays tried to secure hyde park, authorities told us royal parks are for families, not homosexuals. we arrived at pride, schlepped over our £25 [!!!] tickets, and met up with atif, john, spikey james, andrew, luke among others. we made it to the main stage just as the first act appeared on stage.

there was quite the lineup for pride… i was particularly looking forward to jimmy sommerville, junior senior, mis-teeq and soft cell. the first act came out, and everyone gasped and giggled as we heard the gals on stage exclaim, hello london party people! we are the cheeky girls, and we want you to take off your shoozies and dance!. special cheekies pills were distributed around the group, to innoculate against pop overload.

mmmm…. laserrrrrrs

greg and i did speed-dating, which was a hoot. i was wasted trashed high as a kite confident throughout my 10 3-minute dates, and had a blast. out of the 10, the 6 that i liked liked me back [and so did the cute boy sitting next to me], but i most enjoyed the other 4 freaks, particularly the leather daddy [replete with handlebar 'stache] who’s opening question was what kinda sex do you like? i answered franky & honestly, and he demonstrated the proper way to give a blowjob. we like kinky!

other vague memories include running into friends visiting from america, consoling popstarz simon on his condemned stage, getting quite muddy with some lad named pete, convincing landlord charlie and tim to buy us lots and lots of champers at the champagne tent. oh, and dancing like a robotic cowboy for some 6 hours straight in the humid tents.

trekked over to universe, which, by all accounts, is probably the best clubbing night out in the uk. we swam in, scraped the mud off our souls knickers clogs boots, and spent a few hours chilling in the vip, chatting up anything with two legs. well, except for that midget guy. i tried being all politically-correct and stuff, but dancing with a midget whilst high is a recipe for paranoid insanity [example].

amazing, amazing, amazing tunes. was so great to [finally] drag .gregiño out for some all-night clubbing/bonding. the perfect mix of hard-core party boy marky, with young innocent andrew, expert raver greg and trashy party animal extraordinaire [moi] made for quite a band of superheroes for anyone who crossed our paths. we danced and chatted and drugged and clubbed and drank and pulled and just soaked in all the amazing positive energy from the heaving masses. in typical eric form, i made an ass out of myself chatting-up nicholas, the owner of coco latté.

eventually the wide-eyed sweaty masses of nubile brit-flesh started to slow down, the laserrrrrrs started to lose their hypnotic effects, and the drugs started to wear off. chilled watching the sun come up on an entirely silent london bridge, laying down next to the thames for an hour, just chit-chatting and lurving life. in total, lots of cheekies & cheekiness, a solid 12 hours of dancing, and tons of mysterious new numbers in my mobile’s phone book. good times, good times.

.gregiño and i went to see the q-fam collective, a hot gay hip-hop group, at a lil club just off hoxton square. i had heard our friend marcos’ impressive tunes during my interview with him for xy40, and i was impressied all over again at the live gig last night. a great dark bouncing sound, good repor between the grrlz and bois, and very smart lyrics:

at one point i said to greg, i can’t wait until marcos is famous. and i meant it.

there were a few hotties at the gig, presumably all people that marcos shagged at one point [sorry, qboy!] in my mind obviously they all fancied me, probably noticing my huge ego package beer belly dance moves.

[hot boy 1] greek-lookin’ boy, dressed very plainly but very cute. danced next to me throughout the performance whilst greg took photos. his friend kept looking over.

[hot boy 2] skinny 24yo punk-rock boy, with pretty much shaved head and mohican, dyed red & black, going [get this!] diagonally across his noggin. was all butch and punk-rawk, yet drank cocktails and white wine. sounded a bit queeny, but perhaps that’s a good mix. he looked over sheepishly precisely three times.

greg insisted on continuing our gay hip-hop evening by dragging me to bump at sound. here, too, they had great tunes and a live PA, and a wide variety of cute boys for me to stalk [after greg ditched me around 1230am or so]

[hot boy 3] twinkalicious wannabe qboy. skinny, english, wearing a light blue belly shirt, yet somehow retaining some machismo with a gold chain. very much the qboy look. he circled around me as i danced by my lonesome, and scoped me out whilst i chilled up in the balcony.

[hot boy 4] the somewhat beefy bboy, with his baggy shorts and long-sleeved tee, busting crazy dance moves like the robot and stuff that i hadn’t seen since my days bboxing in brooklyn in the mid-eighties with with j-lo’s mom. he stared at me from the balcony above—i pretended i didn’t see.

[hot boy 5] i amazingly deduced that the group of 10 lost-looking young boys and girls in the corner of the dancefloor where a group of high school students from italy, on holiday, and on pillz. they were all smiles, but as i danced with each cute young italian lad, they quickly started sucking face with one of the girls. all, except for one boy. no older than 18, black hair, blue eyes, dressed all in white. short and cute, and absolutely intrigued and frightened by my approaches. cat and mouse to the extreme.

those were the highlights. clubbing by myself is very occasionally fun, and last night was one of those times. went home reeking like a pig, which i can’t explain in the least, as the club was quite air-conditioned. maybe i’ve been wearing dirty clothes all week? anti-perspirant no longer working? i dunno—don’t you wish everyone used dial?